


The Regrets of a Lady

by Just_Trying_To_Get_Around_You



Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Apologies, Arguing, Character Study, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Little Nightmares II Spoilers, Suicide, Time Loop, oh boy, uhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29769339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Just_Trying_To_Get_Around_You/pseuds/Just_Trying_To_Get_Around_You
Summary: THIS STORY CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS FOR THE END OF LITTLE NIGHTMARES II.In all other loops, the Man and the Lady are reduced to husks of themselves with nothing truly left inside, only burning themselves inside out from bitterness.In this one however, they retain their humanity, and the Lady keeps a television in her quarters.
Relationships: Mono & Six (Little Nightmares)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 179





	The Regrets of a Lady

**Author's Note:**

> GOD I’ve been getting brainworms for this fic for a solid week now thanks brain for that. Take this character study mixed with a theory and a little bit of hope to tide you over until the next chapter of FFGFFG. 
> 
> TW: Heavily implied suicide, major character death, struggle to communicate emotions, regrets, betrayal, emotional turmoil, the world is a big-ass nightmare.

The Lady keeps one television in her quarters on the Maw.

The only other ones allowed are the ones on the bottom floor to accompany the Janitor, keep his senses from bouncing off the walls. There are no others allowed, except for one the Lady keeps in a small compartment on the wall. Nobody has seen it, for nobody is allowed up that far. It is simply there, serving a purpose only she knows.

One day as she is going through her daily routine, and about to make her rounds, a crackle of static sounds through the air.

She cannot see him, but she feels his presence in the air.

“Hello, Six,” the Thin Man rasps in a way that almost sounds like a purr. “Nice to see you again.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Mono,” the Lady replies, every bit the poised ruler of her poisoned ship. “I don’t imagine you can see much from there.”

The Thin Man laughs, and it sounds like the pouring rain of the City. “I can see everything that comes within range of my Broadcast, including you.”

“It’s your Broadcast, is it?”

“Well, it would be hard for it to be anyone else’s, wouldn’t it? Considering that  _ I’m  _ the only one locked down here.” She can hear the smile in his voice and considers, not for the first time, breaking the TV into a million pieces. “Thank you for that generous gift, by the way.”

“You’re welcome,” the Lady says, because it is all she can say without her words clogging up at the back of her throat as juvenile excuses die on her tongue.

“I have to know, even if it changes nothing,” the Thin Man crackles, and the Lady holds her breath. “Knowing what you know, would you have left me there a second time?”

She surprises herself when she says “No,” and feels the static rise as she can only assume the Thin Man has reeled back, shocked at her answer. 

“The Tower told me different,” he replies, the static simmering just below the surface, and he almost sounds like a child again, too much like the naive, scared boy he once was.

“The Tower lies,” the Lady says, because she knows, she knows of the world the Tower spins into truth solely to satisfy itself. She was its victim once, just as he is now.

“I know,” is barely allowed to hang in the air before the static stops and the TV clicks off and some of the tension in the Lady’s shoulders falls.

Perhaps she’ll drift around the outskirts of the City a bit longer.

—

The TV crackles again a few days later, and the Lady thinks that the Thin Man must be as bored as she is, if not more so, if the only thing he has to do is speak to the friend that tossed him to a fate of isolation.

Not that her life is much better.

“Hello again, Lady of the Maw” he greets, voice still cracking at the edges with the buzz of the static.

“Hello yourself, Controller of the Broadcast,” she replies, and the title passes her lips with ease, like she’s said it before.

“What have you been up to?” he asks, smile present in his rasp once again.

The Lady huffs, running the brush in her hand through her hair again. “The same old routine, I’m sure you can guess.”

There’s a comfortable silence, and the Lady almost would have thought he’d gone again if not for the telltale burn of the TV.

“That song sounds familiar,” the Thin Man says, and there’s something almost like regret in the way his voice splits the air, and the Lady catches herself humming again. “Is it the one your music box used to play?”

“Yes,” she says stiffly, because no matter the twisted hold on her mind, each crack in the box had still hurt like a physical blow, and the single-minded determination of her only friend was the only thing she could make out through the haze. “It was a comfort to me for a long time.”

“I’m sorry,” the static burns out, and it doesn’t sound like a lie. “I’m sorry that I had to do it. I’m sorry that I will do it.”

“Apologies mean nothing now,” she says, even as she untenses, slightly.

“Then you could give one to me.”

A beat.

“That’s fair.”

“I’m sorry that I destroyed your comfort, Six,” the Thin Man says, before the fire disappears from the air and a click sounds through the room.

“I’m sorry that I let you fall, Mono,” the Lady says, alone with the silence.

—

The Lady doesn’t bother with a greeting when the TV next clicks and hisses to life, and before the Thin Man can, she says, “Do you think I’m ugly?”

The static hisses unevenly a bit for a moment, like water sloshing in a jar.

“Would you like honesty or my opinion?” he replies, and the buzz shields his tone from her keen ears.

“I imagine both are the same,” she says, tilting her head toward the TV in a way she knows he can see.

The static stops for a moment, and the Lady almost thinks that the Thin Man has left again, but then he speaks, without the burn of the Tower behind him. “I could never think you ugly.”

Then there is a click and he is gone.

The Lady misses him more than she should.

—

The next time they talk, the Thin Man is the one not to bother with a greeting. 

“Were we ever friends, Six?” he asks, and the Lady’s breath gets caught in her throat despite herself. When there is no response, he continues, the static beginning to rise again, as a shield. “I think about our time together a lot, and I watch my memories over and over and I wonder if you cared about me as much as I did for you. It could just be the Tower twisting them to make me bitter, but I don’t think you much did.”

“Of course I cared!” she snaps, and she doesn’t mean for it to come out as a yell. “You were the only person I could count on and then you left me to be grabbed by your older, bitter, twisted self because you couldn’t stop  _ cowering _ .”

The static  _ surges _ so hard that some of it literally sparks out of the screen. The Lady is almost afraid the TV will break and she doesn’t want that to happen, not really.

“I still came to save you!” the Thin Man retorts, and all of the childish reasons and arguments are coming to light, twisted by the burden of knowing the truth. “I made the Tower come to me and I followed your music box to find you, and it  _ hurt  _ to see you like that! Like all of the monsters we had fought and fled together! I wanted to do anything but destroy that box but I knew it was the only way to get you out! I-”

He cuts himself off, and the Lady can hear his heavy breathing as the static shakes and burns and fizzes.

And then she surprises herself again by saying, “I’m sorry.”

It’s clear that the Thin Man doesn’t expect it either as the static rises again to be almost painful. 

After a few moments, it calms, and he doesn’t reply for a long moment.

And then the TV clicks off again.

\--

The next time the TV clicks on, the Lady resolves not to mention it.

The Thin Man doesn’t give her a chance. “When are you going to die?” he asks, like it’s a fact of their lives. They will be killed by themselves in a moment of need, whether of noble motivation or of something less than human, and there is nothing they can do to stop it.

She says none of this. She says, “Never, if I can help it.”

“I’m going to die a year from now,” he says, like it’s of little consequence.

Maybe to him it is.

“I don’t remember the exact day it’ll happen,” she lies, because the day she surpassed any adult in power as a child was a day she remembered forever, the day she doomed herself.

“That’s rather lucky, then,” he says, and there’s an indecipherable emotion in the static. “All of my memories have dates attached. I can see all of it.”

“That sounds like a rather torturous existence,” she says, putting a finger over the mask on her face. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“I’m sure you can’t,” he replies, but there’s no bite or tease to the words this time. 

They fall into another silence, the static still fizzing and popping in a way that has become comfortable to the Lady, much to her own muted shock. A lot has been shocking her lately.

“I’m still bitter,” the static hisses, under its nonsensical tune. “Nothing will change that I can’t forgive you.”

“But?” she asks, because it’s all she can ask.

“But, I can accept that you’re sorry,” the Thin Man says, his voice painfully small through the receiver, and it barely sounds like he’s aged a day since then, the dreadful moment where his scream was burned into the Lady’s mind forever, that she wasn’t able to regret until she truly became a monster. “I can accept that you thought you were saving us both. I can accept that you were mad. I can accept that you burned as much as I did.”

The Lady smiles a bit under the porcelain mask on her face, painted so she could hide her ugliness. “And maybe I can accept that you wouldn’t have brought me harm, if I hadn’t left you there. Maybe I can accept that you were only saving me from a fate worse than death. Maybe if neither of us had been children, things would have turned out differently.”

“Maybe they would have.”

The moment passes, but they sit contentedly in the silence.

True silence, this time, with nothing burning to split the air.

They are older, but wiser, monsters, but human, cruel, but kind. 

They understand, and it is in this moment of clarity, that the TV in the Lady’s quarters shatters spectacularly. 

She shields her face from the glass on instinct, and it scatters across the floor.

She feels lighter now, and she knows in her heart that things will be different now. 

In a City not far off where the Maw floats, a man sits in the bowels of a tower he helped to create and smiles at the eyes watching him from all around. He sends shocks of power outward, collapsing the Tower around him, and causing the TVs in the city and Tower itself to implode. He destroys it all, with no remorse, knowing that he has stopped even a single more evil tainting the world. The Thin Man ends the Broadcast, and Mono wakes up.

In the Maw itself, a woman stands and walks to a balcony overlooking the wonder that is the Maw’s cruelty. She frowns in disgust and unleashes something dark from her mind, pulling and pushing at the Maw’s very outer walls, ripping into the metal and making it leak and strain and explode into the water, drowning its occupants, including herself. The Lady destroys the Maw, and Six is free.

Somewhere, two children will be alone in a world that wants to destroy them, but they will no longer be doomed.

Maybe a third will join them.

Or a fourth.

Maybe more children will follow them.

Maybe they will find a place in this nightmare of a world where they can be children, unafraid and carefree, untainted by the burning corruption of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Hmmmmmmmmm brainworms
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, and maybe drop a kudos or a comment? It makes me feel better about posting my writing!
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr @kikiofthevast


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